


Promises Made

by plothound



Series: Turnesly [2]
Category: Original Work
Genre: (not sexualized), Amputation, Anal Fingering, Anal Plug, Anal Sex, Angst, Chastity Device, Drinking Games, Drunk Sex, First Time, Light Dom/sub, M/M, Mutual Pining, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Trauma, War, is there a tag for like... people reconnecting after a long time apart, reconnecting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-08
Updated: 2020-12-08
Packaged: 2021-03-10 03:00:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,718
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27963407
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plothound/pseuds/plothound
Summary: Two feudal noblemen spent a drunken afternoon together in their youth, and things got intimate, but that was years ago, and they've hardly spoken since. No one sane would keep the promise they made, not after so long, but one of them has his suspicions, and eventually, he has to ask.
Relationships: Original Male Character/Original Male Character
Series: Turnesly [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2047970
Comments: 7
Kudos: 51





	Promises Made

**Author's Note:**

> Some folks were curious about how the arrangement in "Upkeep" came to be, so I tossed out a number of ideas in a comment, and I really liked this one, so I wrote it. The others are on my (lengthy) to-do list.

It’d been a good, what? Fifteen, twenty years? Somewhere in there. Fifteen or twenty years, and de Vairs still felt a hot clench in his belly when he saw Turnesly, and especially when he saw Turnesly on horseback. They’d barely spoken, just the occasional greeting when they happened to pass each other. It was a busy world, and they were busy men. There was no time for… whatever this was. But here de Vairs was, in the stable on a pretext even he’d forgotten, his arm hurting, watching Turnesly check over his horse.

It was a great black charger, not the foul-tempered bay that de Vairs had been snapped at by so long ago. This mount suited its rider better, he thought, at least in looks. They both had a forbidding, looming aspect to them. It wasn’t visible in the rider at the moment, because he was bent over—there was that heat again—running a hand over the charger’s fetlocks. He shifted, gave a little grunt—oh, saints, was that from stiff legs, sore from the joust, or something else?—and straightened up, and yes, there it was. Turnesly didn’t hunch, like so many tall men did, but he had an odd way of jutting his head forward that made him seem as though he did. It went well with his hooked nose, which wasn’t visible at the moment, but— 

Turnesly froze for an instant, and then, quite suddenly, spun around. When he saw de Vairs, his eyes widened. His lips parted in surprise—there it was  _ again,  _ hot and startling between his legs, he was going to get hard if he didn’t calm down—and for a moment, de Vairs was certain that it had really happened, and nothing had changed. Then Turnesly’s mouth closed, and his face went all closed off. 

“Earl de Vairs,” Turnesly said with a small bow. “To what do I owe the honor, my lord?”

  
  
  
  


Lascan de Vairs was twenty-one years old, and Ferrin Turnesly was nineteen, and they were holed up in a gamekeeper’s shelter on the castle grounds in pouring rain, very drunk and giggling like children. Lascan was nearly in tears as he lifted his wineskin with shaking hands. “—and so he’s holding the bird like this, and he says—” He wheezed with laughter. “—and he says—he says, ‘’Ere then, what’s this liddle bassard doin’ here?’ And he shakes it—” Lascan shook the wineskin firmly, hardly able to speak. “—and the bird just—just goes absolutely berserk!” He mimed wrestling with the wineskin. “It’s all ‘ee! ee! ee!’ and Master Bartem’s trying to get it off and—and the bird’s fuckin’—fuckin’ panicking, there’s feathers everywhere, it’s biting him, it’s scratching, and then all of a sudden, it goes very still, and—”

“No!” Ferrin said, looking absolutely transported with delight. “It didn’t!”

“It did,” Lascan said with great relish. “Shit all over his doublet.”

Ferrin doubled over, laughing so hard that it was nearly silent. There were tears streaming down his face. After some time, he managed to pause long enough to take a gulp from his wineskin, and then he was back at it. “I have to—” he wheezed. “There’s—it’s—”

“What?” Lascan giggled, slopping a bit of wine on his hand as he drank. 

“It’s—” Ferrin managed to stop laughing for a moment, barely containing it. “It’s not his doublet!” He let out a great peal of laughter when Lascan choked. “I heard the maids talking of it this morning! It’s not his, he  _ leased  _ it from a tailor for the tourney—”

Lascan had to cork the wineskin and put it down to avoid spilling it everywhere. It was too absurd. “Master  _ Bartem,”  _ he gasped, hardly able to breathe with laughter,  _ “leased  _ a doublet, and now—”

“It’s not leased any more!” Ferrin said ecstatically. “Sod’ll have to pay for it all the way!”

“Oh, right,” Lascan said, suddenly remembering. He snorted at the thought. “Wait ‘til you see what I found in the baths this morning…”

“I didn’t see you in the bath,” Ferrin said, looking a little confused.

“Oh, it’s because of my father,” Lascan said, bored, digging through his satchel. “He’s an earl and all, so we’re allowed to use the duke’s baths with the rest of the peerage.”

“Is it nice in there?” Ferrin asked. “I heard the Duke has baths like the ancients, in the ground, hot and cold, tiled and all.”

“Yeah, they’re all right,” Lascan said dismissively. “But here, look—” He fished around for a while longer before he found what he was looking for and withdrew it with a flourish. He passed it to Ferrin, who examined it, looking nonplussed.

“What is it?” he asked eventually. It was a little wooden object, a little curved, well-polished, very smooth. There was a flare at one end, and the other bulged a little into a bulb before rounding off. He turned it in the light, but seemed to gain no insight from it.

Lascan grinned. “You can’t guess?”

“I don’t see what you’d do with it,” Ferrin said. He pushed a shock of dark hair, still damp from the rain, out of his face and peered closely. “A handle for something?”

“In a manner of speaking,” Lascan said, unable to stop another giggle. He swigged some more wine. “It’s for your ass.”

Ferrin, whose nose had been practically touching the thing, pulled back sharply.  _ “What?”  _ he said, half laughing.

“No, really,” Lascan said, still giggling. “Some men like the feel of it. You know, catamites. They stick it up there and leave it.”

“Odd,” Ferrin said. He didn’t seem to find it funny, but was looking at the plug with an air of repulsed interest. “I’d think it’d be bad enough to do it with another man, but to do it with wood, even…”

“They’re different,” Lascan said with a shrug. He was disappointed that Ferrin wasn’t laughing. He cast around for an idea to make things fun again. What did they need… He took a drink, then smiled. “Let’s have a contest.”

Ferrin looked up from the plug and grinned. “What sort?”

Lascan held up his wineskin. “A drinking contest. Whoever can finish first wins.” He picked up Ferrin’s wineskin, frowned at the weight difference, and slopped a bit from Ferrin’s skin into his, trying to get them even.

“Wins what?”

That was more difficult. Lascan thought a while, running through his possessions—that wouldn’t be fair, Ferrin was only the son of a knight and couldn’t be expected to give something comparable in value—privileges, from baths to meals to bedrooms—that could maybe work—before he laughed, marveling at his own stupidity. He picked up the plug. “Whoever loses has to wear it,” he said, grinning. “And keep it in until after the feast this evening.” That ought to be a real challenge. The duke’s feasts were well known for extending deep into the small hours.

Ferrin stared at him. “You’re mad,” he said after a moment. But he picked up the wineskins and weighed them in his hands. “Really mad.” He looked Lascan up and down.

Lascan didn’t mind; he was doing the same thing, sizing Ferrin up. Ferrin was a little taller than he was, but his build hadn’t caught up with his height yet. He wasn’t thin, exactly, but there was a sort of raw leanness to him; they probably weighed about the same. They’d both already had quite a lot of wine, and they seemed about the same level of drunkenness. Were they evenly matched, then? 

“All right,” Ferrin said, handing Lascan one of the wineskins. “On three, then.”

“Better put them down,” Lascan said, dropping his on the floor between them. “And we can count together.”

Ferrin nodded, and they sat across from each other, waiting. 

“On three,” Lascan said, and Ferrin counted with him. “One. Two. Three!”

Lascan snatched his wineskin and began drinking the wine as fast as he could. It wasn’t a particularly strong wine, but he’d already had quite a lot of it, and it was harder to drink fast when you were drunk. And they hadn’t had any bread or anything to go with the wine, so the taste was quite overpowering, and it sat heavy in his stomach. But he pressed on, trying not to pay attention to Ferrin, who was working just as hard, and when he finally forced down the last mouthful and dropped the wineskin between them, the world wobbled a little.

Ferrin was only a moment behind him, but it was still clear enough who’d won, and the knight’s son steadied himself, appearing to have difficulty focusing his eyes, before he frowned and nodded. “That’s… fair enough.” His voice was a little slurred, and he looked uncomfortable. Too much drink for him too, then. He looked at the plug, sitting on the floor, and his mouth twisted in displeasure. 

“Go on, then,” Lascan said. He was a little surprised at how quiet his voice was. The world drifted again, and he had to shake his head a little to fix his eyes on Ferrin. “Put it in.”

Ferrin leaned forward, and his fingers sought the plug on the floor several inches away from it before they slowly drifted over to the right place. Then it took a few tries before his fingers closed around it, and then he nearly fell over sitting up again, and then he fumbled vainly at the laces of his breeches. His fingers slipped and muddled, and he seemed to be having difficulty focusing.

“Here,” Lascan said finally. He leaned in and undid Ferrin’s laces for him. It was fairly difficult for him, too, but Ferrin was swaying slightly just sitting there, so he knew he had to be better off. He pulled down Ferrin’s breeches a bit and was taken aback to see his cock. Lascan had always been quite proud of the size of his own kit, and was a little put out to find that Ferrin was about the same size. It looked larger on Ferrin, too, with his thinner build. Ah, well. He ignored it and pressed on, slipping Ferrin’s breeches down to mid-thigh helping him lean back and angle his hips up. Then he sat back. “Go on, then.”

Ferrin screwed his eyes shut and opened them again several times, apparently with great difficulty each time. Eventually he managed to focus on Lascan’s face and nodded slowly. He reached down, fumbling past his cock, and started probing for his hole with his fingers. He found it, but it took a lot of wandering, and when he did, it took him even longer to arrange himself so that he could slide a finger in. He frowned a little when he did it.

“How’s it feel?” Lascan asked. He’d never looked at a man’s asshole before. It was an odd feeling.

“Odd,” Ferrin mumbled after a long pause. He seemed to be wiggling his finger, probing gently. “Dunno… Tight.”

“Well, go on.” Lascan watched with a strange sort of interest. It felt funny in his gut, almost familiar. He wondered if it was a sympathetic reaction. Certainly he couldn’t imagine what that sort of thing would feel like. He caught himself leaning too far to one side and steadied himself. He’d never been this drunk before. Maybe that was part of the funny feeling.

Ferrin was still exploring with a frown of great concentration. Then he paused, looking confused. “What am I… what are we…”

Yeah, they were both drunk as dogs, but Ferrin was worse off. “The plug,” Lascan reminded him, pointing to his other hand.

Ferrin lifted the plug in mild surprise. “Oh, right.” He put it between his legs and attempted to line it up for insertion, but missed. He put it in place again, and missed. And again.

“Give it here,” Lascan said, shaking his head. He leaned forward and took the plug. 

Ferrin frowned again, looking confused. “You’re going to…”

“Easier,” Lascan said. He scooted forward, between Ferrin’s legs, and lined up the plug properly, despite the unpleasant sloshy feeling in his head and belly. He missed the spot himself a couple of times, but then he used both hands to hold the plug steady and managed to rest the rounded tip on Ferrin’s hole, next to his finger. “Here, I’ll—I’ll push.” Ferrin hummed quietly in what Lascan assumed was understanding, and moved his finger to the side, pulling loosely at his own hole.

Lascan did his best to focus, despite the way the hut was wobbling, and pushed. The plug pressed against Ferrin’s ass, but didn’t actually move in. He pushed harder, and it slipped off to the side entirely. He glared at it for a moment before he set it up to try again, lining it up with the delicate care of a cartographer positioning a drawing compass. Then he pushed again, and for a moment he thought it had worked. There was a gentle sinking beneath his hands as the plug moved inward slightly, but then it popped off to the side again. “Damn,” he muttered. 

Ferrin flopped back on the floor. It looked like he’d done it at least half on purpose. He kept his finger in his ass, somehow, and after a few moments of sluggish, indecipherable mumbling, reached down with his other hand and squeezed in a second. 

“Oh, right,” Lascan said. “Yeah. Yeah, pull them apart, that’ll work.” Ferrin pulled, and Lascan was mildly surprised when he managed to seat the tip of the plug where it belonged, pushing about half an inch in, Ferrin’s hole bowing in a little around it. “There, that’s working.”

Ferrin shifted, and then clenched a little. “Mm.” He wiggled his hips slightly. 

Something distant in Lascan was alarmed to see the beginnings of stiffness in the cock that hung there, above his hands, but he couldn’t remember why, exactly, that was cause for alarm. Wrong, somehow… He pushed harder on the plug, and a little more forced its way in. “Think you can take your fingers…” 

Ferrin pulled his fingers out, and the plug slipped further in with a faint little  _ thud.  _ He groaned. “‘S not bad, that.” He put his hands on the insides of his thighs with a clumsy, drunken sort of care and spread his legs a little wider. “G’on.”

“Yeah,” Lascan said slowly, “yeah, all right.” That funny feeling in his belly was drifting a little, into more familiar places, and he realized with that same sense of vague alarm that his own cock was feeling warm and weighty. He pushed the plug in further. There was better than an inch in there now, Ferrin’s ass giving way to the tapered, rounded length of the tip. “What’s it feel like?”

Ferrin sighed, a soft little breath of contentment. “Mm. Think it’s nice. Should do more.” His cock was definitely hardening.

Lascan obliged. There wasn’t any danger of the plug slipping out of alignment anymore, so he used one hand to touch Ferrin’s asshole curiously. It was at once softer and firmer than he expected, a muscular ring cushioned by a thin layer of softer tissue. It had looked sort of furled at first, but now, with the plug in, it was being pulled taut, almost shiny. That was a strange thought. And relevant, Lascan realized belatedly. Girls’ cunts slicked themselves, but their asses didn’t. That would certainly make it easier. He leaned further forward and spat on the plug, smeared it until it was wet, and pushed harder. It was just the same at first, but when he slipped it back and forth a little, it seemed to grease itself up better, and the insertion began to be easier. And Ferrin’s ass really did begin to look shiny.

Ferrin’s cock had thickened to what looked about half-mast, and was draped idly to one side. It stiffened further as Lascan worked the plug, thickening slowly, interrupted by gentle pulses. He sighed a little and settled his back against the ground properly, with his knees pushed up towards his chest and spread wide so he could leave his hands on his thighs without stretching. He seemed to be enjoying what was happening, and Lascan couldn’t help but be a bit jealous. He reminded Lascan of a man he’d walked in on once, a knight who’d been getting his cock sucked by a serving girl. The knight had been sprawled on his back, too, looking just as loose and self-satisfied as Ferrin did now. Only the knight’s legs had been splayed comfortably on the bed, rather than hiked up to put his ass on display… 

Lascan managed to get the plug about halfway in that way, working it back and forth, spitting occasionally. It got wider up until about three-fourths of the way down its length, where it reached its broadest point and narrowed suddenly before flaring out again at the base. Lascan could guess well enough what that was about. He wasn’t sure the whole thing was going to fit, really. It had seemed simple enough when the plug had been lying in his hand, maybe about two-thirds the length of his hand and a couple fingers thick. He wouldn’t have hesitated to put it in a girl’s cunt, anyway. But asses seemed to be a different story, tighter, more difficult. Perhaps that was why girls usually weren’t keen to try it, at least in Lascan’s experience, which was rather less extensive than he would’ve liked. He held the plug where it was and examined Ferrin’s ass, trying to gauge whether the rest of it would fit.

“Is it in?” Ferrin’s voice shocked him. It was breathy and a little hoarse, like he’d been fucking.  _ No,  _ Lascan realized suddenly.  _ Like he’s being fucked.  _ That voice and that thought together went straight to his cock, and just as suddenly, he became aware of how hard he was, aching hard, trapped up behind his breeches’ laces.  _ That can’t be right.  _ But he was definitely hard, and now that he’d noticed, he couldn’t un-notice it. He could feel the heat and the want, the clenching need deep down below his belly. That wasn’t going to go away. 

“Is it in?” Ferrin asked again, not sounding perturbed that he hadn’t been answered.

“No,” Lascan said. He didn’t even  _ say  _ it, really, he  _ breathed  _ it, practically groaned it. He pulled the plug back a little and pushed it in hard again in an attempt at distraction. His voice shouldn’t sound like that. Ferrin, at least, did groan, then, a deep, resonant groan that set something in Lascan to quivering. “Do you…” His voice hadn’t regained any semblance of normality, and in a sudden burst of rebelliousness, he decided that he didn’t give a damn. “D’you want it in?”

“Yeah,” Ferrin sighed. He wiggled his hips again, and Lascan felt his own cock twitch. Ferrin was hard, now, all the way hard. “Yeah, go on.”

Lascan pushed again, adding a bit of a twist with his wrist. “Like that?” he whispered. He didn’t  _ care  _ about his voice, it didn’t matter that it was all soft and deep and breathy like Ferrin’s was, it  _ didn’t. _ “You like it like that?”

Ferrin pushed his hips down toward the plug a little. It didn’t really do much, in terms of getting the plug further in, but he seemed to enjoy it. “Yeah… yeah, do that again.”

Lascan did, quite happily. There was a harsh eagerness in his movements now. The first time he’d been with a girl had been the first time he’d seen one naked, and he’d been careful then, like she’d been a small animal, because she looked so different and strange, no cock, and with curves and soft spots in strange places, but he’d seen men naked plenty of times, wrestled and sparred and fought with them, and he felt free to be as rough with Ferrin as he would be with himself. He was fairly gentle with the plug, he didn’t know anything about that, but he had a hand on Ferrin’s thigh, now, fingers digging in sharply to the warm flesh, and his own hips were moving in short, sharp little aborted thrusts, like he was trying to rut against air. He hardly noticed it, just felt the rolling warmth and excitement in his groin and let the rest of his body sway a little with the motion as he twisted the plug deeper. When he pushed and pulled it back and forth like that, like he was fucking Ferrin with his hand, it didn’t go too much deeper. It was going to be a concerted effort to get the thing in, and he’d better focus on that soon, because if he didn’t, he was probably going to spend himself pretty quickly.

That thought set off another vague, distant alarm in the back of his head. He did want to come, his cock thought that’d be fantastic, but there was something stopping him from slipping a hand down and finishing himself off. His mind was all muddy, but something told him that he shouldn’t come, not like this, not  _ to  _ this, and he leaned in yet closer, trying to concentrate. He stopped pulling the plug out so far, instead withdrawing it only a little before he pushed it firmly back in. That quickly turned into another rhythm, and Ferrin groaned again underneath him, one long low one, and then he started making little noises in his throat every time Lascan shoved the plug in again, and he kept changing the angle of his hips, like he was following Lascan’s hand.  _ “Deeper,”  _ he sighed, and Lascan pushed harder.

The next push brought the plug deeper than it had gone yet, and Ferrin suddenly gave a muffled cry behind gritted teeth. “Fuck,” he groaned. Lascan stopped, startled, and Ferrin grabbed his wrist and used it to push the plug in again for a few thrusts, in a slightly different direction each time, and then he seemed to find what he was looking for, because he moaned and squeezed Lascan’s wrist bruising-hard. “There! There, fuck, there’s somethin’…” His eyes were closed, and there was a hot red flush all down his throat, and he was slurring worse than he had been earlier. “Somethin’ there, feels good.”

Lascan hesitated for a moment, then went for it, trying to push the same way that Ferrin had, and it took him a couple of tries, but then Ferrin bucked under him with another thrilling cry, cock twitching frantically, and Lascan leaned forward again to rest his forearm on Ferrin’s chest, hold him still, so he wouldn’t lose this angle. “Just there,” he said. He was panting now, he realized. The heat in his groin was boiling, and his cock felt like it was going to break out of his breeches. “You stay there, don’t move.” His next push was more forceful. He felt strangely powerful, in control.

Ferrin  _ whined,  _ and Lascan nearly spilled at that beautiful sound. “More. More, get it in all the way, get it in…” He seemed to feel just as strangely willing and compliant as Lascan felt commanding.

Lascan kept pushing back and forth. Not pushing, he realized. Thrusting. Fucking. That was what he was doing, he was fucking Ferrin’s ass with this thing, fucking another man, and he was enjoying it so much that he felt on the verge of spilling in his breeches. That vague sense of alarm at the back of his head was pretty strong, now, but it was fighting to make itself known past the base lust flooding him, and while he couldn’t avoid it entirely, it was easy to pay more attention to the heat of the body beneath him, the resistance against the plug in his hand, the whines and moans and desperate twisting motions… 

Ferrin let go of Lascan’s wrist and went for his own cock instead, taking it in hand and beginning to stroke feverishly. 

“No,” Lascan panted. He stopped thrusting and grabbed Ferrin’s forearm, yanked it up to pin it to the floor by his head. Ferrin’s eyes were half-closed, gazing up at him heavily, lips parted, flushed and shining with sweat, with a delicious, unquestioning obedience, and Lascan resisted a sudden urge to lean in and kiss him. “You don’t finish, not until I’m done, don’t touch it.” He moved his mouth close to Ferrin’s without thinking about it, their lips almost brushing, and he diverted at the last moment to lick his cheek instead. The taste of sweat and someone else’s skin made the fire in his groin roar. “You don’t touch it, I’ll finish you, I’ll do it.” He licked Ferrin’s throat then, and somehow chanced to brush against his pulse there. He gave a muffled groan himself and slammed the plug in hard. It was almost in, he could feel it, almost past that widest part. 

“I won’t touch it,” Ferrin gasped. He let go of his thigh at last, and a long leg tangled messily around the back of Lascan’s clothed thighs, his half-on breeches getting in the way, and then his arm followed, knocking almost painfully into Lascan’s back to clutch between his shoulder blades, nails scraping against the doublet. “Won’t touch it, just get it in, do it.”

The next few seconds, or minutes, or something, were a messy blur of gasping and moaning and frantic thrusting. Lascan didn’t know when he started rutting against Ferrin’s available leg, only that it felt incredible, and he very nearly didn’t notice his own climax, because it came shortly after the plug at last slammed all the way in with an obscene wet  _ pop,  _ followed by an almost inaudible  _ thud  _ that vibrated up through Ferrin’s hips and made the knight’s son cry out, fingers digging into Lascan’s back hard enough for real pain, bucking wildly up against him, then freezing and slowly relaxing as he spent all over their doublets. Next to that, Lascan hardly cared that he’d spilled in his breeches against Ferrin’s thigh. He only had eyes for Ferrin’s heaving chest, only felt the trembling breaths against his body and the smooth wooden handle of the plug under his fingers as he rubbed it slowly, without thought. 

“It stays in,” Lascan whispered against Ferrin’s neck, later, when they’d been lying there together for a while, cooling down, listening to the rain. He squeezed Ferrin’s cock—it had ended up in his hand, somehow, and he’d been absently fondling it—and was, on some level, basely delighted to find it half-hard again. It made that heat in his groin purr. “I’ll find you after the feast, and then we can take it out, but it stays in until then. All evening.” He wanted to kiss Ferrin, whisper into his mouth and find out what he tasted like, but that panicking part of him flatly refused, and he couldn’t quite work past it, so instead, he put his teeth gently to Ferrin’s neck, not biting, and then pulled back and licked the spot. “And you’re not to touch yourself,” he added in a burst of inspiration. He was almost shocked at how deep and throaty his voice was. “I’ll finish you. Later. Til then, leave it. Until I say.”

“Mmm.” Ferrin quivered a little underneath him, and reached down to cup Lascan’s hand, the one around his cock. “Yeah.” They stayed there for a while, until the rain finally stopped and they stumbled back to the castle.

  
  
  
  


That night, of course, the feast had been interrupted. It’d started off well, though Lascan had found himself unable to meet Ferrin’s eyes for more than a moment. There’d been good food and good drink—not that Lascan or Ferrin touched much of either, both rather thoroughly sick to their stomachs after their private drinking contest—and then the messenger had come, and the duke had read the missive with a face like a thunderhead before heaving himself to his feet and roaring for everyone to prepare for travel, assignments to come, and Lascan had spent the rest of the night frantically packing his things and his family’s, preparing the baggage, while his father and most of the other lords and knights sat in council with the duke, and then nearly everyone had departed, only a few knights remaining at the castle, because the southerners had taken Gestry and were coming west.

Lascan didn’t see Ferrin for months after that, and when he finally did, it was only a glimpse at an army camp, Ferrin and his father late arrivals for battle, and they had no chance to speak. The battle after that, Lascan was taken prisoner, and his life went to hell. He spent a few weeks languishing in a cell at Gestry with the remains of its last occupant, and then he was taken further south when the western houses started making progress, ended up in some ruined tower that he didn’t know the name of, locked in a shed with several others, all of them bound and gagged. That dragged on for a long time, and Lascan heard mutters of mutiny from the soldiers. The lord commanding them decided to have a bit of sport to keep them happy, and then things  _ really  _ went to hell.

Lascan was the first they tried, and the last. They cleared out the lower floor of the tower and threw him in there with a knife and a wildcat, and the wildcat won handily. Lascan didn’t remember the actual fight beyond a few vague flashes, but the results continued to haunt him. The thing had mauled his left arm, nearly shredded at the wrist and tapering off up by his shoulder, with a few stray gouges to his neck and one small one to his jaw. That would’ve been bad enough, but he had the misfortune to get an infection. 

The southerners tried to help him by removing his hand, where things looked worst, and they stitched and poulticed and bandaged him to the best of their ability, but the infection spread up all his wounds, and he went mad with fever. He had vague memories of seeing demons constantly, horrible shadowy things looming over him and taking him apart piece by piece, and he knew he’d been tied down to stop him from hurting himself and everyone else, but that had made the madness worse. He’d screamed himself hoarse every waking moment, writhing and flailing as he tried to escape the fever dreams, and they had to force a stiff leather tube down his throat, where it scratched and tore, and pour broth into him to keep him alive. Only in his fever, they were filling him with demons and insects and boiling oil, and he fought that as hard as everything else.

His first real, conscious memory after the wildcat was waking up in a bed at Gestry with an absurdly old physician leaning over him. Things got better from there. The war had been won while he was ill, and Earl de Vairs came to Gestry as soon as he heard Lascan was awake and sane again. Lascan spent a few more weeks at Gestry, working with the physician to regain the use of his damaged, weakened body while a carpenter made him a wooden hand to replace the one he’d lost. It was a long time before he could eat naturally, by himself. He wanted food, but his jaw and throat locked up at the sight of it, and he had to keep doing what the southerners had, feed himself broth with a funnel and a tube. It was a great victory for him, back at his father’s manor, when he first managed to force down a mouthful of bread. He choked on the second mouthful and got crumbs all over himself, but a long, slow year later, he could fairly reliably eat unaided, though he could stomach much less than most, which left him thin and wiry. His throat still convulsed now and then, years after his illness, and he avoided soups and stews, but there were times when he felt… almost whole.

His arm impeded that, of course. The stump of his wrist was a mass of knotted scar tissue, and more scars, deepened by the infection, wound their way up his arm. It pained him sometimes, on cold nights. He learned to use the wooden hand passably well, and considered himself fortunate to be right-handed. He could still use a sword and write with a quill, at least. The scar on his jaw was hardly a ruination, either. Like his others, it was deeper than it ought to be, eaten nearly to the bone by infection, but he didn’t mind it much, and he didn’t think anyone else really did, either. It made him look a little more frightening, perhaps, but that could be useful in a man of rank. Besides, one of the cooks still blushed a little whenever she looked at him, and struggled to make eye contact. That kept his spirits up.

His father passed the title to him much earlier than he expected, apparently excited to enjoy a long and comfortable retirement, and Lascan found himself Earl de Vairs at twenty-nine. He took to it well. Diplomacy came easily to him, and the duke often sent him as an ambassador. It was the duke who proposed the formal alliance of the western houses, and de Vairs did much to cement it. He didn’t flatter himself as the sole reason it had all worked out as smoothly as it had, but he had certainly contributed. It was easy for him to understand the positions of the various houses, and he helped to untangle the knots of all their problems and feuds and desires, until finally they arrived at a treaty uniting them. That had taken the better part of three years. 

These days, things were calmer. De Vairs spent his time attending to the various practicalities of his rank, and was only occasionally called upon to settle arguments or help moderate trade deals. The wartime fear and austerity had died down over the years, and feasts and tourneys became common again. He still took part in those, in the jousting and melees, and even occasionally the target shooting. It took him longer to line up a bow properly with his bad arm, and he couldn’t manage it very well on horseback, but he could shoot on foot with the others. He had been very wary of feasts at first, with his problem, but eventually he’d learned that if he went slowly, ate only a bite or two at a time, and spent a few minutes tensing and relaxing his throat beforehand, he rarely had trouble. He didn’t care for dancing, but he did what was expected of him, most often finding women without partners so they could enjoy the dances as well. They were always uncomfortable with his wooden hand at first, but usually they relaxed after a dance or two, when they saw that it made little difference, and they tended to enjoy talking to him. He supposed he had something of a way with people.

But a way with people and years of experience in diplomacy weren’t helping him now. Turnesly—Baron Turnesly now, granted a title after the war—was looking at him impassively, and de Vairs had trouble meeting his eyes. “You rode well,” he managed, after an uncomfortable pause. 

Turnesly shrugged a little. His black fur mantle made him look even larger than he was. Not that much taller than de Vairs, really, but de Vairs was so much thinner and lighter than he’d been in the gamekeeper’s shelter that he felt like a deer looking up at a bear.  _ He’s only a few inches taller. You’re tall yourself.  _ He tried to collect himself, tried to think what to say next. Turnesly certainly didn’t seem about to say anything. He looked so different, so much older, so much grimmer and sterner and fiercer. Fuck, this was absurd. Of course Turnesly wouldn’t remember, and it was even more ridiculous to think that he might still be… wearing something. But all those little things kept adding up, all the little shifts of position and frowns at nothing and slow blinks that de Vairs had seen from a distance over the years… 

“I was impressed by your turn against Marness,” de Vairs said. Shame and embarrassment were fighting a little war of their own in his belly, and below that, there was that damn heat that kept licking at him, like a fire that had almost caught. “He’s quite celebrated in these parts.”

Turnesly nodded politely. “I had not expected to be unhorsed by a man so young.”

_ Did it hurt? Is it in you, did it shift hard when you hit the ground?  _ “You should be proud. It’s some time since anyone lasted more than one tilt against him.”

Turnesly nodded again, and said nothing, only watched him with a face that revealed nothing. 

_ I licked that face. I tasted you.  _ Turnesly’s collar and mantle hid his throat, but de Vairs remembered the pulse hidden there from when it had chanced to throb against his tongue. He wanted to feel it again, he wanted it more than anything… “You may remember, when last we spoke…”

“At the winter festival, if I recall,” Turnesly said. 

“No,” de Vairs started, then shook his head. “Well, yes.”  _ Do it. If you can’t work up to asking him now, you never will. Fuck, doesn’t he remember? What if he doesn’t? We were so drunk…  _ “I was thinking of an earlier meeting.”

“The tourney at Hanley’s.” Turnesly wasn’t having any trouble making eye contact, but de Vairs certainly was.

He fidgeted, just slightly, but enough for a bolt of shame to run through him.  _ Just say it! You’re a man, you outrank him, even, just say it!  _ “You may recall… when we were younger, before the war…”

If Turnesly had been impassive before, he was a stone wall now. There was nothing on his face, and his gaze, as best as de Vairs could make out from when he occasionally managed to meet it, was fixed, unmoving. “Gestry?”

“No,” de Vairs managed. “After that. At the duke’s castle. It rained…”

There was a flicker of something in Turnesly’s eyes, just for a moment, but de Vairs didn’t know what it was, and Turnesly didn’t say anything, just kept looking at him.

“You… if you remember, we took shelter in a gamekeeper’s hut…” He could hardly get the words out.

“I remember.” Simple, flat, not the slightest inflection, nor the slightest waver in his gaze.

_ He’s afraid,  _ de Vairs realized suddenly, in an instant of inspiration.  _ He’s just as afraid as you are. More. You’re an earl, title in your family for ten generations, and he’s only a baron, hardly more than a landed knight, and only titled since the war. You could ruin him with a word. He doesn’t know, he can’t afford…  _ It made things no easier. Rather, it made it worse. Turnesly couldn’t say anything. The responsibility was wholly on him. He tried three times to speak, but it was only on the third that he finally managed to force out the words. “You… we made a promise, after, before the rain stopped, and I was wondering…” His throat convulsed a little, and it suddenly became clear to him how absolutely terrified he was, and that Turnesly had to feel worse still. “I wondered if you kept the promise.”

There was a long silence. Turnesly kept looking at him with that stone gaze, impassive as a statue, and for a long time de Vairs was sure that he was considering how best to approach the duke. Then, just as de Vairs was about to apologize and leave, Turnesly said softly, “My word is my bond.”

Something hot and vicious twisted in de Vairs’s groin, and he felt his fingers tremble. “You… how long did you…” Turnesly just meant the one night, surely. He wouldn’t have… no sane man would keep such an absurd promise for… But all those tiny moments over the years, how stiff and sore he always seemed after a joust, the little shifts and groans that could have meant nothing more than stiff joints, but every little one of them had sent a hot thrill through de Vairs… 

“I don’t believe,” Turnesly said, voice low but clear, “that you ever released me from that promise.”

De Vairs thought he might pass out on the spot. That meant… surely… His cock was certain, at least, he was hard now, aching, and he had never been so thankful to be wearing one of his longer doublets, but his mind wasn’t, he mustn’t allow himself to believe it without absolute confirmation, he had to say it, if he could only get the words out… “Is it… is it in? Now?” 

His voice was so quiet that he wasn’t sure Turnesly had heard him. But then, after a moment’s pause, the corners of Turnesly’s mouth turned up, ever so slightly, and then more, and more, until it was the cruellest, wickedest smile he had ever seen, and when Turnesly spoke it was like a purr. “Always.”

De Vairs hadn’t felt himself go genuinely weak in the knees in years. He still had nightmares sometimes, but those usually left him furiously awake, his legs ready for running, not… like this. He wanted to collapse, sit quietly for a while, but he also wanted to rip Turnesly’s clothes off—the violence of the urge surprised him—and  _ see…  _

He didn’t really notice Turnesly move, just knew that suddenly they were quite a lot closer. Kissing-close, almost. Turnesly filled up his field of view, tall and broad and dark in the dim stable, and with a lurch of boiling need, he realized that he could smell him. Leather, metal, horse, but also  _ him.  _ It was only the slightest touch of that smell that de Vairs remembered filling his nose from that afternoon so many years ago, no more than anyone might smell passing on the street, but it was more than he’d smelled in years, and his stomach knotted up with want. Then Turnesly leaned in, just slightly, and murmured, “Would my lord like to see?”

He grabbed Turnesly’s forearm without thinking. Turnesly had taken most of his armor off since the joust, only his legs still steel-clad, and he’d opened the sleeves of his arming doublet and pushed up his shirtsleeves to take care of his horse, so de Vairs’s fingers closed on bare skin, disarmingly warm in the cold air, and that contact alone made his cock twitch desperately. “Yes.  _ Now.”  _

Turnesly looked, for the first time, just slightly off-balance, and de Vairs realized that it was the touch.  _ Him, too.  _ He squeezed gently, and was gratified to see Turnesly close his eyes for a moment, and then suddenly things seemed to shift, and de Vairs felt the same sort of way that he had when he’d ordered Ferrin not to come, years ago: masterful, sort of, in control, and Turnesly was looking down at him with that same strange, needy obedience, and he knew that Turnesly would do anything he wanted in that moment.  _ I could say anything.  _ But he was going to make good decisions, the right ones. There was a trust there, in Turnesly’s eyes, and de Vairs was going to use it well.

“The loft,” he said softly. Most everyone else was probably already in the hall for the dance and feast, and they were unlikely to be disturbed in this stable, the smaller one, but just in case… 

Turnesly seemed reluctant to move for a moment, but then de Vairs let go of his arm, and he turned and headed up the ladder into the hayloft. He was wearing a mantle against the cold—it was still cold in the evenings this time of year—but de Vairs could imagine, thrillingly, how his ass must be moving as he climbed the ladder, how the plug— _ it’s in him, it’s in him, it’s been in him— _ must be shifting and pressing and thudding… 

He took a moment to pick up a lantern before he followed Turnesly up—it was going to get dark soon, and damn if he wasn’t going to really  _ see  _ what Turnesly was going to show him—and when he came up into the loft, Turnesly had already taken off his fur mantle and spread it out on a hay pile, and was lying down on it, comfortably cushioning himself, getting into position.

_ He’s getting into position.  _ The thought was stirring up even more heat in his groin.  _ He’s getting into position so I can—  _ He shook himself a little and hung the lantern from a rafter. It was serious work to drag his eyes away from Turnesly long enough to take off his own cloak and drop it in the hay. He undid the toggles of his doublet—toggles were less fashionable than buttons, but much easier to undo one-handed—and shrugged out of that as well for good measure, leaving him in his shirtsleeves. Turnesly was flicking easily through the small brass buttons of his arming doublet, but de Vairs knelt between his legs and caught one wrist. “Slowly,” he breathed. Really, he would’ve liked to do it himself, like unwrapping a present, but those damn buttons were in the way. He’d settle for watching.

Turnesly gazed up at him and nodded slowly. He kept looking as he carefully unfastened one button at a time, but de Vairs was watching the growing gap in the doublet, like a crack opening up to reveal an undyed linen shirt, and through the gaps in the shirt’s laces he could just see slivers of warm flesh, and the angry, boiling heat in his belly wanted him to rip the doublet and shirt away and touch and taste and kiss, but he restrained himself. Turnesly shifted his hips, just a little, settling himself more comfortably, and de Vairs very nearly gave up and grabbed him, but managed to stop himself.

He hadn’t seen Turnesly’s body back in the gamekeeper’s shelter, he realized. His memory of the event was rather hazy, given the amount of wine involved, but he remembered that he’d only seen thighs and ass and cock, nothing above or below that. He’d never been in the baths with Turnesly, either. He’d never seen anything. Somehow, strangely, this felt more intimate. He was going to see Turnesly’s belly and chest and bare arms and shoulders and hips and sides and— 

Turnesly made it to the bottom of his doublet, never looking away from de Vairs, and slowly, slowly pulled it open, looking for all the world like a shy maid showing her tits for the first time, never mind that he still had a shirt on. 

De Vairs allowed himself a few moments to lean in and press his face to the base of Turnesly’s neck, rubbing his cheek against a broad collarbone, strong and bold beneath the linen, smelling that glorious, heady perfume of sweat and fabric and leather and  _ him,  _ before he pulled back. He wasn’t sitting as far back as he had—his knees were pressed up against Turnesly’s armored thighs now—but he wanted a full view. “Go on,” he breathed.

Turnesly undid the tie at his throat first. The shirt wasn’t laced full down the front, but rather held together with a series of ties. Convenient, really. Better this way than fumbling with long laces. Turnesly approached them slowly, gently, but with just the slightest tremble, like it was real work holding himself back. He kept watching de Vairs, his expression almost pleading, but de Vairs had eyes only for the narrow, growing strip of bare flesh down the middle of the shirt.

It was pale, mostly, almost pallid, but there was a warm flush spreading down from the throat, and de Vairs had to actively stop himself from following it with his tongue. He wanted so badly to touch and taste, but he was going to wait, damn it. He was going to see all of Turnesly first. Years of imagining—the conscious realization that he  _ had  _ spent years imagining Turnesly naked was something of an afterthought—and now he was finally going to see, and only when he’d seen it all was he going to allow himself to explore it with his fingers and lips and tongue. 

Turnesly was beautiful. De Vairs was so enthralled with every inch of revealed skin that he had difficulty dragging his eyes down to the next. Beautiful collarbones, every bit as strong and pronounced as they’d felt through the shirt. Beautiful sternum, the beginnings of the rounded curve of each muscular breast just visible under the sides of the shirt, pink with that spreading rosy flush. Beautiful belly, padded somewhat with middle age, but still firm and powerful-looking. Beautiful navel—de Vairs had been vaguely aware that men’s navels tended to look subtly different, shorter and wider, almost eye-shaped, compared to women’s longer, narrower ones, but he’d never consciously noticed or cared until this moment, and now he was enraptured with the delicate little hood. And then there was the hair, a dark, feathery trail that broadened as it reached down, and… and that had been the last button. Turnesly’s padded chausses were covering everything else.

Turnesly gazed up at him. He had two fingers hooked under each side of his shirt, just above where it tucked under his chausses, and the rest of his fingers had the faintest tremble. He was waiting, de Vairs realized, for permission.

De Vairs ignored that for now and instead leaned forward. His own fingers were trembling a little. That was a benefit of wooden fingers, he supposed; at least they couldn’t shake. He gently tucked his wooden fingers under one side of the shirt, and his good fingers under the other, just barely brushing warm skin. Turnesly flinched visibly at both touches. Then it was about resisting the urge to simply yank, and de Vairs found quite suddenly that he simply couldn’t anymore. He pulled sharply, and all of a sudden the front of Turnesly’s torso was on display for him.

It was just as beautiful as everything he’d already seen. The flush was more visible like this, a warm, rosy cast, a lovely complement to the dusky pink nipples. De Vairs trailed his intact fingers down an exposed breast without thought, and groaned softly when he felt the thrilling heat, saw the rise and fall of excited breaths. He circled a nipple, then gently thumbed it, wondering whether they could be sensitive in men like they were in some women, and was delighted when Turnesly gave a needy little sigh and pressed up into the touch. He was distantly aware of the beginnings of rain tapping on the stable roof.

De Vairs did his level best to hold off on taking Turnesly’s pants off. He paid attention to each nipple in turn, making sure they were thoroughly teased and tweaked until they protruded, red and swollen, between his fingers when he cupped the muscle of each breast. He examined the soft curve of Turnesly’s belly, pleasantly grippable, fitting nicely into the fixed curve of his wooden hand, and made sure to run his palm over every inch of solid flank, trace the painfully tempting line of hair below the navel, squeeze the roll of padded muscle that bulged out powerfully over each hip. There was so much to explore, details and broad strokes, but his groin was hot and squirming and deeply insistent, and he had to do it, he couldn’t stop himself any longer.

Turnesly’s belt wasn’t too thin, thankfully, relatively easy to undo with one hand, and de Vairs did it. His fingers had stopped trembling while he explored Turnesly’s torso, but now, with the prospect of seeing something even more intimate, they were starting up again. He was faintly impressed with Turnesly; he remembered very well the size of Turnesly’s cock, and was fairly sure that if it had been hard, it would have been visible even through the padded codpiece. He slipped the loops of the codpiece off of the belt and gently peeled it down, exposing the undyed linen of Turnesly’s breeches, and frowned. The linen was a bit sweaty, clinging somewhat, and the shape of Turnesly’s cock looked odd. The tie was done up in a simple bow knot, easy to undo one-handed, so he did, and he opened the breeches up and pushed them down a little, exposing Turnesly’s cock and a bit of his thighs. He stared.

“I had to,” Turnesly breathed. “Couldn’t stop myself touching it, and you told me not to.” He took de Vairs’s hand and pressed it gently to his cock, trapped and straining angrily against a little bronze cage. Both metal and flesh were hot against de Vairs’s palm, the flesh bulging painfully through the gaps in its confines, clearly trying desperately to be hard but remorselessly restricted. “You told me not to, and I had to make sure I couldn’t.”

De Vairs gazed at it. His initial surprise was giving way to both pity and a shocking amount of hot lust. “You…” His voice was hoarse, and when he tried it again it was little better. “You keep yourself like this? For me?”

“Yes, my lord.”

De Vairs let his hand glide over the caged cock, and Turnesly  _ whined.  _ De Vairs flinched, not from surprise, but because the answering surge in his own cock was almost painful. He ran his thumb around the base of the head, where the flesh didn’t look so angry, and was gratified with another whine. “When’s the last time you touched it?’

“Not since the war,” Turnesly said, somehow managing to sound needy and smug at the same time.

De Vairs stared at him then, looking up at his face for confirmation of what he’d just heard. “You’ve gone all these years without?”

“Well, I touched it during the war,” Turnesly said. He sounded  _ ashamed.  _ “I couldn’t stop myself after a while. So after, I had to find a way…” 

De Vairs shook his head slowly, thumbing the shaft—it throbbed, straining, against his hand—and letting his fingers play over the large balls. “You…”

“I’m sorry, my lord,” Turnesly said. “I really did try.”

De Vairs shook his head more firmly. “No! No, it’s…” There was a great pit of mingled emotion and lust warring in his belly, and lust was really starting to win. “It’s beautiful,” he managed, and was annoyed at how his voice shook. “It’s beautiful, you’ve been _so good…”_ He bent down to look at it closer, and was shocked and delighted to see a drop of clear fluid leak from the tip at the praise. “You’ve been so good, saving yourself for me. So good. I’m so proud of you.” Turnesly moaned a little, and de Vairs came even closer. “Look how good, _look_ how _good.”_ He wrapped his hand around it and felt it throb. “Been good for _me…”_

“Yes,” Turnesly breathed. “For you, my lord.”

De Vairs kissed it, to his own great surprise. He really hadn’t meant to, but it was right there, and his lips were right there, and he always did a lot with his mouth during sex, instinctively licking and sucking, so he supposed it was only natural that he’d go for Turnesly’s cock, since it was  _ right there  _ for him, all wrapped up like a gift, but it still startled him. The flesh was hot, and the metal was warm, and his front teeth clacked against the cage when he kissed it more deeply.

Turnesly was  _ whimpering,  _ making little noises like he was about to cry, and his hands, clutching his doublet, were shaking. “Please, no, please, my  _ lord,  _ it’s too—”

De Vairs pulled back with some difficulty, trying to remind himself that it wasn’t Turnesly’s cock he’d been fantasizing about for years. “You’re right,” he murmured. “This first.” He looked lower, and pushed Turnesly’s balls—large and hairless, kept that way, he supposed, for the cage—gently to one side, revealing a stretch of strangely inviting taint, and then, startlingly, metal. “It’s not the same one,” he blurted in surprise.

Turnesly chuckled softly then, lifting his hips just slightly, as if showing himself off. “No. No, I have quite a collection.”

De Vairs touched it gently, then worked his fingers under the handle that rested along Turnesly’s taint. He pulled a little, revealing the beginnings of a thin stem. “Collection?”

“All different shapes and sizes,” Turnesly sighed. His voice sounded warm and tight. “Some of them metal, some wood. Little ones for travel and tourney, bigger ones for court, the biggest for home.”

“This is… a tourney one, then?” de Vairs asked, tugging it a little further. It was resisting him more than he expected, and his guts were squirming with a faint suspicion.

“Yeah… yes. Yes.”

De Vairs pulled sharply, suddenly, and Turnesly stiffened and shook beneath him, drawing in a sharp gasp, and for a long, long moment, the hole only stretched, like it was reluctant to let go. Then the plug popped out fully, revealing a vast bulb on the end of the stem. De Vairs stared at it in his hand while Turnesly panted softly. “This… this is  _ small?”  _ The bulb had to be more than half the size of his fist.

Turnesly grinned. “I’ll have to show you the big ones…”

De Vairs shook his head slowly in awe. Beneath that, his belly was squirming in delight at the promise of doing… this, whatever it was,  _ again.  _ They’d only had that one meeting for years, and now tonight another one, but in the future, they were… fuck, he wanted to do this all the time, and they  _ could.  _ His hand was shaking again, just a little, the plug glinting. He had to do something. He didn’t know what, though; there were so many options in front of him, every glorious inch of flesh in front of him a possibility, and he wanted them all. He wanted them all so badly.

Turnesly was looking at him, pupils wide and dark, locked on to his with a kind of desperation. “My lord?” De Vairs’s cock jumped at that, something about it, the hope, that strange, needy obedience that he couldn’t name… 

He made his decision without really thinking about it, and simply leaned forward again. He resisted the urge to kiss Turnesly’s cock, just for the moment, and instead fondled his balls briefly, probing for the edges of the cage, wherever it was secured. He found the mechanism on the underside, right above the balls, and felt leather there. He pushed the cage up with his thumb to reveal a length of cord, polished soft and slick with years of use, holding the base shut. It was a simple bow, and it delighted de Vairs to wrap one finger around the cord in a practiced maneuver and simply tug sharply, loosing the knot. Then he tucked that finger up under the cord and pulled, undoing the knot entirely and unlocking the cage. 

It dropped free onto the floorboards with a  _ thump,  _ muffled by Turnesly’s mantle, and Turnesly’s cock sprung up powerfully enough to slap against his belly. Turnesly gave a sharp little gasp, and his whole body lurched, like his cock controlled the rest of him. His chest and belly heaved with shaky breaths, his hands shook and clawed at his mantle, and he made a strained sort of sound that had de Vairs’s cock singing. “My lord,” Turnesly panted. His voice was all tight. His cock stood proud. The lines that the cage had pressed into it were rapidly filling out, though they remained dark and inflamed-looking.

De Vairs couldn’t take his eyes off of it. He couldn’t remember ever seeing anything so lovely. He had to kiss it; there was simply nothing else he could do. So he did. He leaned in and took it into his mouth, only the tip at first, but he wanted more, so he kept kissing his way further down, sucking and tonguing, eyes half closed, until he was halfway down its length. 

Turnesly was whining and shuddering, his thighs trembling around de Vairs’s shoulders and his chest and belly shaking with uneven, gasping breaths.. “My lord,” he said with a kind of weak desperation, “my lord, please, I can’t, it’s—it’s been so long, I’m going to—”

De Vairs forced himself to pull back, just for a moment. “I know,” he said. His mouth felt strange, having to work in ways it wasn’t used to. “It’s for you. Your reward, you’ve been so good. It’s for you, I’ll give it to you.” He lowered his head again, unable to resist any longer. Turnesly’s cock felt good in his mouth, somehow. Right, like it was supposed to be there, all warm and heavy and solid. He gave a slow suck, and tried to divide his attention evenly between Turnesly’s cock and gorgeous, sweaty, heaving body, and his own cock in the mix as well, but it was overwhelming, and it wasn’t long before he leaned in further, bringing his lips nearly to the base, and distantly heard his own muffled moan. It was bliss, there, Turnesly’s cock in his mouth. He never wanted to let it go. It was so hot on his tongue, almost at the back of his strangely-relaxed throat, and he never wanted to let it go.

“M’lord, m’lord, my  _ lord,  _ please, please—” Turnesly’s voice brought de Vairs back to earth eventually, and he became aware that the owner of the gorgeous, incredible, perfect cock in his mouth was gasping and whining. “M’lord, if you keep—I’m going to—don’t, don’t—”

_ I know.  _ De Vairs looked up, made eye contact, and Turnesly stopped talking, just stared at him, panting and gasping and whimpering, and stopped shaking his head. De Vairs pushed himself further, until his lips finally touched the base. Something nearly boiled over in his belly at that, but he was too focused to pay much attention to it. He kept his eyes on Turnesly’s, and he sucked. He didn’t move his head much, for fear that his oddly cooperative throat would suddenly realize what was going on, but his tongue rubbed and licked and stroked as much as he possibly could, and Turnesly’s mouth opened in what looked like it wanted to be a scream, but came out as a near-silent gasp. De Vairs kept going, and going, and going, for a timeless bliss, his world reduced down to perfect, complete awareness of their two bodies, and then, quite suddenly, Turnesly went stiff as a board, looking almost like he were having a convulsion, and his large hands snatched the back of de Vairs’s head and neck, holding him in place.

De Vairs’s throat finally seemed to realize what was going on when it was splashed with heat, and it locked up with a vengeance. He gagged sharply, painfully, and yanked back, seed dripping out of his mouth as he gripped his throat with his good hand. It felt tight and hard and solid, like a cramp, and he rubbed it with his fingers, trying to convince it to let go. He heard his own horrible choking noise and winced inwardly.

Turnesly’s hands hovered around his head as he coughed, clearly desperate to help but not knowing what to do. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, my lord, I’m so sorry—” De Vairs shook his head as best he could, given that it was currently twitching spasmodically. His throat kept making wet clicking noises. “—my lord, should’ve pulled out, so sorry, please, please, breathe—” 

De Vairs sat back a little with some difficulty in order to free up his wooden hand, and waved it in what he hoped was a dismissive, comforting sort of gesture. His throat eased up momentarily at the movement, and he managed to gasp, “Not you,” before it clenched again, though not as hard. He kept rubbing it, tried to clench into the cramp and relax, and after a long, painful minute, during which one of Turnesly’s hands kept hovering helplessly and the other started rubbing his shoulder, it finally eased, leaving only a little residual tightness and a lingering ache. “It’s not you,” he croaked. “Not you. It’s—it’s my own problem. Had it for years.” The rubbing, both his own and Turnesly’s, was helping a little, or at least it distracted him.

Turnesly’s free hand hesitated, then joined his own at his throat, feeling the trembling muscles there. “You—are you all right, my lord?” 

De Vairs shrugged a little, shaking his head. “Fine. Fine.” He stopped rubbing and instead put his hand on Turnesly’s cock, well soft by now, but still gorgeously hot and wet. “So good,” he breathed. “You were—you were so good.” He leaned forward again and kissed Turnesly’s bare chest. “So good.” He’d gone half soft during his fit, but the taste of sweat and skin seemed to go straight to his cock, stiffening it against his breeches. “Good…” The heat that had subsided briefly was coming back again, rising quickly.

“I…” Turnesly looked embarrassed. “I can’t again, not for a while.”

De Vairs was unsurprised—he certainly couldn’t go more than once at a time these days, and Turnesly’s climax had looked very draining—and he nodded slowly, wondering whether it would be more inconsiderate to stroke himself to completion or ask Turnesly to do it. Then he saw the plug lying there on Turnesly’s mantle, and his cock jumped, and he felt himself blushing at the sudden sharp, obscene knowledge of what he wanted to do. Now  _ that  _ would be inconsiderate.

“My lord?”

De Vairs stopped himself from asking what he wanted to ask and picked up the plug. “Did you want this back inside?”

A flash of… embarrassment? Disappointment? A flash of something flickered briefly across Turnesly’s face, and he averted his eyes as he nodded.

De Vairs hesitated. Something had changed. That joyful, needy lust they’d shared was fading, and the strange shift of power between them seemed to have vanished. Was it something he’d said, done? He frowned.  _ What did I miss? _

He had paused too long, and Turnesly looked up. “My lord?”

“Was there…” It felt odd to just  _ ask,  _ like it was a normal question. “Was there something else you… wanted?”

Turnesly’s lips parted, like he was about to say something, but he seemed to think better of it, or at least to have second thoughts. He seemed to be having a hard time looking at de Vairs, but there clearly  _ was  _ something else he wanted.

“Do you know what it is?”

Turnesly winced. “Yes, my lord. I…”

“Tell me,” de Vairs said softly. That sense of mastery licked at him briefly, and he felt the beginnings of that power between them again. Turnesly clearly did, too—he looked up at de Vairs quickly, eyes quietly pleading—but it hadn’t set in completely, so de Vairs leaned in a little closer. “Tell me what you want.”

“Yes, my lord,” Turnesly murmured. He gazed up at de Vairs as if mesmerized. “I want… I’ve always wanted… inside me, my lord. Not a plug. You.”

De Vairs stared at him. 

“You don’t have to,” Turnesly said quickly, already looking away again, face reddening. His shoulder shifted, letting his shirt cover more of his chest, like he was wrapping himself up as protection against whatever de Vairs was going to say. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—”

“No,” de Vairs blurted. “No, I—that’s what I wanted.” He put his good hand on Turnesly’s chest, splaying his fingers out, automatically rubbing gently. “I didn’t want to put you off, I thought it was silly, rude…” 

“Please,” Turnesly breathed. His eyes were wide, and he was breathing hard again. “I want—I always wanted to know what it’d feel like. The real thing, the real you, I’ve been waiting.”

De Vairs was beginning to breathe hard himself. The fire was building in his belly and between his legs, his cock stiffening fully again after a brief lull, and there was nothing he wanted more than to just do it, pull Turnesly’s hips toward him and angle him and line himself up and… “Ask me,” he said. “Ask me for it.”

“My lord,” Turnesly said. One of his hands, on the mantle, was shifting and gripping in barely-contained excitement, and there was a slow, rhythmic, almost unconscious shift in his hips. “My lord, please, do it, put your cock in me, I want to feel it,  _ fuck  _ me.”

De Vairs grabbed Turnesly’s hips and yanked, to a bitten-off little gasp of surprise. He lifted them a few times, changing the angle, before he reached down with his good hand and thumbed the toggle of his breeches loose. He knew he really ought to stop, get his chausses off, push everything down to his knees, but he couldn’t. He’d been waiting so long.  _ They’d  _ been waiting so long. So he got his cock free at last, and groaned when it slipped free and swung heavy, thick, aching, standing lazily. He spat, gave himself a few quick strokes, and lined himself up. He was already panting.

Turnesly opened up for him beautifully. Decades of plugs would do that, de Vairs supposed later, but at the time, he couldn’t think of anything but how perfect it was, how well his cock fit Turnesly’s yielding hole. He pushed in, and in, and in, until he was halfway inside, glorious squeezing heat all around him. Turnesly gasped and shuddered beneath him, and he pressed his body down, Turnesly’s bare skin against his shirt. He wished briefly that he’d taken his shirt off, too, but that faded quickly. He was nearly fully clothed, but that didn’t matter, not next to what he was doing, what  _ they  _ were doing.

“Deeper,” Turnesly panted in his ear. “Deeper, please, my lord, all the way, get all the way—”

De Vairs thrust, hard, driving himself deeper, and Turnesly’s plea was cut off with another gasp. He wanted to reassure Turnesly that there was absolutely no question of taking anything less than the full length of his cock, that they were both going to get what they needed, but speech seemed beyond him, and he just groaned, and then again, louder, when Turnesly clenched around him. He pushed harder in response, and slid in further. He tried to hold himself back, at least a little. Surely it would be better for both of them if he slowly worked his way in. He withdrew somewhat before pushing in again, trying to open the way slowly,  _ slowly,  _ despite everything in his body begging him to get a move on.

There was a muffled little noise under him, almost a growl, and then there was a hand on the small of his back, and another on his ass, and they both pushed hard. “I said  _ deeper.”  _

De Vairs lifted his head far enough to meet Turnesly’s eyes, and that strange power between them shifted yet again, stirring up something in his belly. They weren’t—they hadn’t  _ switched,  _ exactly, de Vairs still felt masterful, but there was a strange thrill in hearing the order. He felt a grin spread across his face, and his good hand trembled. He nodded once, slowly, not breaking eye contact, and then again. He rolled his hips, and Turnesly’s eyes closed and his mouth opened, and he made a sound that de Vairs wanted to hear again every day for the rest of his life. He rolled again, more firmly, getting himself just a little deeper, and Turnesly made the sound again, and de Vairs, without thinking, pressed his mouth up against Turnesly’s, like he was going to eat the sound.

There was a moment where they both hesitated, de Vairs shocked at himself, but it was only a moment, and then they were kissing, fast and hard and hungry and messy. De Vairs’s cock was singing. He could taste Turnesly, and it was exquisite. He hadn’t—fuck, he hadn’t kissed anyone in years. He couldn’t remember the last time, and he didn’t want to. He never wanted to think about kissing anyone else again. There was just Turnesly, panting into his mouth, and he was thrusting gently, not paying any attention, more focused on lips against his, the slight scrape of a day’s worth of stubble, and it felt like they were there forever.

“Come on,” Turnesly finally muttered between kisses. “Come on, all the way.”

De Vairs obeyed without thought. He thrust, hard, and Turnesly yelped, and he felt his groin seat itself against Turnesly’s. Then his thoughts came back, and he pulled his head back and looked at Turnesly’s face, trying to gauge how he was feeling.

Turnesly looked absolutely blissful. His eyes were closed, and he was quivering, his torso shifting from side to side with barely contained ecstasy. Both of his hands were on de Vairs’s ass now, holding him in place.  _ “Yes,”  _ he groaned. “Yes.  _ Yes.”  _

The need to spill himself had faded a little, but now, with that view, and with that sound in his ears, and that body pressed against his, and that warm, squeezing heat around his cock, it came rushing back, building up deep inside him like water behind a dam. De Vairs pulled back, just a little, just enough so that he could drive in again. Then he did it again, and again, and again, and every time he did it, Turnesly made another sound, that same sound as before, the beautiful one, and he built himself up into a rhythm. With his clothes still on, there was no slap of skin on skin, and he regretted that, but he could still feel the impact, the heat of their bodies meeting, and it was enough. Fuck, it was enough. He sped up, until he was gasping with the exertion and groaning with the rising need.

He spilled himself quickly; there was no way around that, not as worked up as he was, and he didn’t mind, it felt right. He felt his climax in his cock, in his balls, throughout his groin, and running in sharp clenches down his spine, and he worked himself through it with a few slow, shuddering thrusts. Then he slumped down, not quite dumping all his weight on Turnesly, but close enough, and they kissed again, softer this time, slower. 

Turnesly slipped a hand between their bellies and pressed his own groin. “You’re in there, my lord,” he murmured. “You’re in me.”

“Yeah,” de Vairs mumbled sleepily. His eyelids were heavy, and he let them drift closed as he kept kissing, slowly, softly, no urgency. “I’m in you.”

They had to get up eventually, and they did, de Vairs pulling free as Turnesly moaned beneath him. The plug went back in, and the cage went back on—de Vairs watched carefully, studying how Turnesly’s considerable cock was pressed back into confinement—and de Vairs helped Turnesly get his clothes back on, and get all the hay off his mantle, and he accepted the offered assistance in getting his doublet back on and doing up the toggles. Turnesly did up his breeches for him, too, and that brought a low, almost ticklish thrill, but his cock was too tired to do anything about it.

Then they were standing there, in a hayloft, surrounded by the smell of hay and horses, only dimly catching each other’s scents, and after a long silence, de Vairs knew he had to be the one to ask, though the question stuck painfully in his throat. “Do you want to… again, someday?”

_ “Yes,”  _ Turnesly whispered fiercely, quiet and ragged and needy, and de Vairs sagged with relief. Then that same slow, cruel grin from earlier spread across his face, and he stepped in close, dark and looming. “Yes, my lord.”

A hot thrill trembled in de Vairs’s belly.


End file.
